204 DAYS OF DEER-STALKING. 



" Donald," said he, " you may put Fionavon in your 

 paunch, for wherever the deer are, there will John More 

 be found." 



This conversation was in Gaelic, in which language the 

 peculiar phraseology is more piquant than can be rendered 

 in English. 



Donald MacCurrochy Mac-Ean-More, who lived latterly 

 at Hope, was another very noted poacher in Sutherland. 

 Numerous anecdotes are told of this man; but they refer 

 rather to the great enormities he was in the habit of com- 

 mitting, than to his lighter trespasses amongst the deer. 

 His acts of violence and injustice were so unusual and 

 savage, as to render him an object of universal abhorrence. 



His family name was Macleod. He deliberately mur- 

 dered his nephew, that he might possess himself of the 

 adjoining lands of Eddrachilles ; and he afterwards put to 

 death several of his friends, whose revenge he anticipated. 

 He was an expert archer ; so ruthless a villain, and so 

 ready to slay any one that offended him, and, indeed, every 

 one whom he could attack, whether friend or foe, that, at 

 a period when the law was quite inoperative in the remote 

 corners of the Highlands, he became the terror of the entire 

 country. The greater part of his time was spent in the Dirrie- 

 more forest, where he was very successful with his long bow. 

 His nephew, when attacked by him, took refuge in a 

 straw-covered hut, in an island on an inland loch ; but 

 MacCurrochy tied burning pitch and tow to the head of an 

 arrow, and firing it into the roof, set the place in flames. 

 The young man endeavoured to escape by swimming, but an 

 arrow from the ruffian's bow pierced his heart just as he 

 was reaching the shore. 



MacCurrochy's shieling was without a door or window, 

 and he entered by a hole in the roof, from which he would 

 occasionally take a shot at a passing traveller. It is re- 

 ported of him, that when walking with his son, a mere boy, 

 on the banks of the river Hope, they saw a neighbouring 

 priest on the opposite side of the river ; young MacCurrochy 

 exclaimed 



" O, daddy, give me your bow that I may bring down the 

 priest." 



